Clovelly Wood Music Hall

This page is where you can learn about music history, composers, and their music. I love music - I feel it is very important - it can say things more powerfully than words. It can be used for good or bad, therefore, we must select our music carefully. I would like to quote on of my favourite composers, Johann Sebastian Bach:
"The aim and final reason of all music
should be nothing else but the Glory of God
and the refreshment of the spirit."
Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)

Johann Sebastian BACH, one of the two greatest composers of the Baroque period, was a devout Lutheran. Born at Eisenach, Germany, he was musically talented at an early age, like many in his family. He could sing and play the violin, and he soon learned to play keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord and the organ. (This was before the piano was invented). He became known as the best organist in all of Germany, and was often asked to inaugurate new organs.
His first appointment was as a church organist in Arnstadt. The church leaders soon started to complain about the way he played - "for having made many curious variationes in the chorale and mingled many strange tones in it, and for the fact that the Congregation was confused by it."
He married a cousin, Maria Barbara in 1707, with whom he had seven children.
Bach composed a great quantity of music - different types depending on whose service he was in at the time. For instance, when he was the court organist and chamber musician in the court of the Duke of Weimar at the age of 23, he composed mainly church music because the Duke shared his preference for it. However, after 9 years, Bach wanted to find a new position because the Duke did not advance him. The duke imprisoned him for a month to keep him from the offer he had received, and then freed and discharged him unfavourably.
His new master was the Prince of Anhalt Cothen, who preferred chamber music. Therefore, he composed mostly chamber music - suites, sonatas, concertos (including the Brandenburg concertos), and keyboard music. Maria Barbara died in 1720, and he remarried - a young singer named Anna Magdalena with whom he had 13 children. Half of his 20 children did not survive infancy. Four of his sons later became important musicians.
At the age of 38, in 1723, he was appointed as Cantor of St. Thomas' in Leipzig - a very prestigious position with many duties. This was his last position - he held it to the end of his life. Although we now consider him the greatest of the period, he was not the first choice for the position. Georg Phillip Telemann was more popular then but declined the offer. The leaders did not find their new cantor completely unobjectionable - there were many disputes over certain rights and fees, and again the elaborate style of his music - but they kept him because he was the greatest organist in all of Germany.
In his final years, he suffered a stroke and became blind. He died in 1750, leaving his "The Art of the Fugue" unfinished.
He composed over 200 cantatas for the church (they had to have a fresh one every Sunday), and other vocal works such as St John and St Matthew Passions, chamber music, as well as music for keyboard and organ, including 2 volumes of The Well-Tempered Clavier, which was designed to prove that it was possible to play in every existing key (by some strange phenomenon, keyboard instruments played more out of tune the further away you got from the key of C).
We now know the value of this great man who always wrote on every page of his music the words "Jesus Help" and "To God alone the glory".
Baroque music is distinctive for it's being constructed by horizontal lines or voices rather than vertical columns of harmony with the melody on top. This technique is called counterpoint, and it became extremely complicated. The people who could compose in that style were certainly geniuses.
The music playing in the background was composed by Bach. The selection I included was: 3-part Invention no 13 ;

Bibliography:
1. The Enjoyment of Music, 6th ed. by Joseph Machlis, pp.350-54

Links:
Classical Midi Archives (part of Classical Music Web Ring)
Classical Midi Links (part of Web Ring, has links to midis, educational sites, etc)
The MP3 site - register and listen to classical music - also loads of great celtic music!